


Origami

by Glassdyr



Category: The Transformers (Cartoon Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Demisexuality, Friends to Lovers, Love Confession, M/M, Metaphorical Origami, Protectiveness, Ratchet cares so much but is godawful at showing it, Self-Doubt, Sideswipe: Best Wingman, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-09-23 03:21:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17072552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glassdyr/pseuds/Glassdyr
Summary: Ratchet gets hit in the face with a crush on Wheeljack. Embarrassed by his feelings and how bad he is at hiding them, Ratchet is keen on ignoring his crush until it works its way out of his system.Wheeljack, however, has been waiting for Ratchet for far too long to just let the medic hide himself away again.





	1. Chapter 1

It’s been a rather boring shift for Ratchet. He was now on his third hour of working on reports in an unusually empty medbay, and the monotony was getting to him. He just didn’t have anything to do; the last battle was several weeks ago, and it was a curbstomp victory for the Autobots. He’d treated more headaches and hangovers from the raucous victory party than actual injuries from the battle. Careful surveillance of the Decepticon base even showed no signs of movement after their defeat, furthering how unnecessary Ratchet felt.

Ratchet sighed and kicked his pedes up on his desk. He was procrastinating finishing up his reports, but he just couldn’t bring himself to dive back into the dense sea of words in each datapad. Instead, he’d been exploring the ancient human art of _origami_ after Spike introduced him to it with a pile of oversize poster paper. It was actually a little dull for an “art form”, what with just being folded paper; but for long shifts like these, it was perfect. Over the past few days, he’d made everything from the simplest little flowers to two-sheet polyhedrons and dozens of paper cranes, all with different names.

The medic crisply folded the wings of a white crane accented with green – his favourite one so far – and set it down with the others. After thinking for a moment, he christened it Hephaestus after a human paganist god stuck in his processor for some reason. He set it down and patted it gently on the head with a single finger.

He suddenly felt very silly for treating a piece of folded paper as if it were alive.

Out of paper and unable to procrastinate any longer, he picked up a datapad from the pile on his desk and skimmed Perceptor’s analysis of the medbay’s resource use, as wordy and dense as always. The scientist was proposing that the energy keeping the medbay’s technology on standby be transferred to the laboratory, where it could fuel research. Ratchet understood Perceptor’s logic, but the war-forged paranoia in him made him hesitant. If a surprise attack were to happen, the time it would take to transfer energy from the lab to the medbay and online everything would stall any medical procedures.

After all, the Decepticons could strike at any time, even without any signs of movement on their base. Starscream could go rogue and head out on his own, itching for glory after weeks of silence, or Soundwave could send Ravage or Laserbeak on a sabotage mission, maybe carrying cosmic rust or some other nefarious virus.

…The possibilities were a bit far-fetched, but still, a familiar anxiety ate at him, a constant stream of _what-ifs_ that made him second-guess every decision. It was, as always, his strong preference to keep as much medbay equipment online as possible.

But then Ratchet remembered Wheeljack.

The engineer wanted to build a new grenade launcher that was light enough for Bumblebee to carry but strong enough to fling heavy explosives several yards. The only problem was that the engineer couldn’t procure the energy he needed to forge materials; after all, anything that wasn’t immediately necessary or for a specific tactical operation got earmarked as a personal project. Wheeljack, as was his restlessly creative nature, had personal projects to last generations, but this launcher seemed especially important to him.

Ratchet thought back to about a week ago when Wheeljack first described his launcher to him. The light in Wheeljack’s optics matched the bright cyan glow on his helmfins, and that burning creative energy poured out of him like a river. “With the right aim, Ratch, you could shoot a _huge_ bomb right into the heart of a Decepticon formation, out of reach of retaliation! Imagine shooting a _sparkling_ made of _pure white phosphorus_ right at Megatron from a hundred yards away. Well, maybe that’s a bad example – what I meant was a sparkling-sized bomb, not an actual sparkling – but my point is that _anyone_ , even our little yellow half-pint, could use heavy artillery with how light and durable the construction is gonna be.

“But I just can’t scrape together the resources I need with how thin we’re stretched, y’know?” Ratchet remembered how Wheeljack had rubbed the back of his head almost self-consciously, a strangely endearing quirk of his. “It’s a shame. I made a mistake by investing way too much energy into this, and now I can’t let it die.”

Not for the first time, Ratchet had noticed that Wheeljack was strangely expressive. He emoted not with his face, as most of it was covered by his blast mask, but rather with his fins’ light and quick little gestures – and, of course, his optics, which alone could voice just as much emotion as an entire face. Not that Ratchet found Wheeljack’s face particularly interesting; it was just something he’d noticed.

It was that beaming optimism and faith in his abilities, somehow so bright on his masked face, that made Ratchet pause in denying the engineer the resources he wanted. Wheeljack openly showed emotions that Ratchet systematically sought to suppress in himself, and it almost embarrassed Ratchet when Wheeljack got that bright look. It wasn’t the second-hand embarrassment of disapproval or pity, but rather an almost ashamed feeling. Namely, he felt old and cynical next to Wheeljack’s ambition, despite not being too far removed from the engineer in age.

It would be so easy to offline his most unused equipment and allow a handful of resource transfers, giving Wheeljack just enough energy to forge whatever alloy he needed for this launcher of his. The temptation was strong. It would certainly brighten up this boring week just a little bit: not just for the engineer, but for Ratchet too. Seeing Wheeljack work on something he was genuinely invested in was a rare but awe-inspiring spectacle: a flurry of movement with soldering sparks flying like stardust as Wheeljack moved everywhere at once, trotting to-and-fro like an excited turbopuppy, pacing circles around his invention to see it from every angle as his processor worked and reworked over and over the complex physics and mechanics of his creation. If Wheeljack had company as he built, he’d alternate between endless excited chatter and complete focused silence, a combination that Ratchet found entertaining rather than annoying. Ratchet, admittedly, wanted to get Wheeljack started on something, just to let the engineer blow off some of that restless creativity.

But Ratchet’s logic told him to keep the extra power out of Wheeljack’s servos. The medic didn’t quite care for the extra risk of injury – if something happened with this incredibly powerful weapon and there was permanent damage to Wheeljack or, Primus forbid, he got his stupid aft killed, the burden would be on Ratchet for his failure to save him. Ratchet would hang himself with that guilt if no one else did.

Besides, the idea of a dead Wheeljack didn’t sit right with him. _Any_ dead Autobot made his spark feel heavy like it was lead-lined, but Wheeljack dying made Ratchet almost physically flinch.

He felt this way only because, from a purely logistical standpoint, one less Autobot made it that much easier for the Decepticons to take them out, and the loss of Wheeljack would mean the loss of a brilliant mind. Despite the failures of his inventions, the engineer also gave the Autobots lifesavers like the Dinobots. Despite his work's volatility, the engineer was doubtlessly integral to the Autobots’ operations.

Ratchet could see it now: Wheeljack, triumphant and beaming with his new grenade launcher propped proudly on his shoulder, pulling the trigger, and promptly exploding in a blaze of light and sound like a supernova, leaving nothing to bury or, as barbaric as it sounded, use for spare parts.

Ratchet would offline himself if that happened.

The medic sighed and typed out a dismissive paragraph in response to Perceptor’s suggestions of energy transferral. Perceptor and Wheeljack would be disappointed (he grimaced at the idea of Wheeljack’s disappointment in particular), but the scientists would have to make do with what they had, just as the Autobots had always done in this war. He couldn’t let that prototype be made unless Prime explicitly approved it. He couldn’t have it on his conscience to have played any part in Wheeljack blowing himself up.

“Ratchet!”

The mech in question startled so badly he almost flung his datapad across the room. What was that human proverb, about speaking of the devil or something? Did it extend to _thinking_ of the devil?

  Ratchet sighed. “My office door’s open,” he called. He tried to make his voice sound appropriately distracted like he wasn’t daydreaming about the engineer who had just shown up in his medbay. He picked up the handful of paper cranes on his desk, taking great care to not bend their wings, and slipped them into a drawer. Wheeljack’s sense of timing was really awful – or uncannily perfect, depending on who you asked.

“…Can you come here?”

A bit of irritation seeped into Ratchet’s voice despite his best efforts. “You have two perfectly good, functional legs, Wheeljack.”

There was a pause before Ratchet realized that the trait “having legs” wasn’t always a constant with Wheeljack.

The medic flung his chair backwards, almost knocking it over, before storming out of his office to the medbay’s entrance. “I swear, if you’re dripping energon all over the floor again –”

Wheeljack, however, wasn’t completely in the medbay. Instead, Sideswipe was the only one standing in the doorway when Ratchet walked in. He grinned brightly as he held Wheeljack’s disconnected head with one servo and four ashy limbs over his shoulder with the other as if he were carrying a sack of potatoes.

Ratchet faltered, completely and utterly taken aback. After everything he’d seen on the battlefield, not much fazed him, but this was so completely unexpected that he felt his processor stutter a bit, worrying him that he would have to reboot on the spot.

Wheeljack’s head blinked up at Ratchet, apparently waiting for him to move or speak or do _something_ other than just stare in disbelief. “Um. So… Do you think you can put me back together?” His voice was a bit staticky, like a radio transmission out of tune.

Ratchet locked his gaze on Wheeljack’s disconnected head. Keeping his voice carefully neutral, he said, “Wheeljack, I have to ask a few questions first. Triage, if you will.”

Sideswipe shifted in place, the slight motion making Wheeljack’s arms and legs sway a bit over his shoulder. Wheeljack, if it were possible without a body, seemed to shrink into the frontliner’s servo.

“Are you in any pain right now?”

“No, not really. I’m kind of missing my central circuit system.”

“And where, exactly, _is_ your central circuit system? By that, I mean everything attached to your backstrut, like the entire rest of your thorax?”

“I’m still on the floor of my lab. Er – _It’s_ still on the floor of my lab. It was a bit too much for Sides to carry all at once,” said Wheeljack with a forced nonchalance, as if being filmed for a ransom video. “But it’s not charred or anything, though. Still in pretty good condition,” said Wheeljack brightly. “Also, I didn’t drip energon all over the floor –”

“Because I assume your energon lines were fried and cauterised in whatever blast caused all _this?_ ” the medic interrupted.

“Well – you see, it wasn’t a _blast_ , but more like a sudden intense burst of thermodynamic and infrared radiation _._ ” Wheeljack paused. “Nothing exploded.”

“Then how in the name of Primus did this happen?” Ratchet was starting to show shades of his worried anger in his voice, his tone slightly picking up in intensity but still carefully subdued. Despite this, Wheeljack’s head seemed to jump as if he’d been struck.

“Well, okay, so, I was working on that grenade launcher I was tellin’ you about, and I just got a prototype made that I could – ah – use to test the integrity of the alloy I was usin'. Thing is, something wasn’t quite right with the alloy I forged? Apparently, it reacts poorly with the water vapour and oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere and –” Wheeljack broke off his rambling abruptly. “The blast was hot enough to destabilise my joints and I fell apart.”

Ratchet stared at Wheeljack, processing. _This_ was a living nightmare; Wheeljack easily could have died if any variable in this scenario had been skewed even slightly. While Ratchet was caught up in silly daydreams, the engineer was in his lab toeing the line between life and death, and Ratchet would have been helpless to stop it. Even his selfish paranoia in keeping resources out of Wheeljack’s lab hadn’t done any good. Horror wrapped around the medic’s tanks and squeezed, but he pushed it away, uncomfortable with the implications of these uncharacteristically intense emotions. Instead, it helped to be angry, to think that Wheeljack was wholly to blame for why Ratchet was so shaken by this; it was _not_ the ideas of never seeing Wheeljack again or being unable to save someone or the pressing feeling of worry centred solely on this stupid engineer despite the millennia Ratchet had spent learning not to get attached.

Finally, Ratchet’s red-hot anger at both himself and Wheeljack mixed and ignited each other. “ _How did you get the energy to work on that launcher?!”_

The medic’s rough voice was loud enough to echo off the walls; Sideswipe jumped and almost dropped Wheeljack, who struggled to stutter out a response. “I – uh – I’ve been _maybe_ converting my energon rations to electrical energy to run the equipment I need –”

“ _Oh_ , so now you think not fueling is gonna fly with me? Your sorry aft is lucky it’s not in here so that I can see exactly how much you’re running on, but let’s remember that it’s not doing you any good sitting _on the damn floor of your lab,”_ snarled Ratchet.

“Okay, I know it’s not necessarily the _best_ idea I’ve ever had, but in the grand scheme of things, y’know, you gotta sacrifice! For _science_!”

Ratchet laughed derisively. “You sacrificed not just your rations, but almost your life for a _prototype,_ Wheeljack. What a fantastic way to show your appreciation for all the work I’ve done keeping you pieced together over the past centuries.”

The engineer winced, taken aback by Ratchet’s harshness. “What crawled up your tailpipe and died? I expected you to be mad, but not _this_ mad.”

“Oh, what’s wrong with me? How about what’s wrong with _you?_ Why did you think testing an unauthorised, unfunded, incredibly powerful weapon would end without any explosions? Why did you think it would be fine with _me?”_

Wheeljack’s fins dimmed a little, and his voice dipped into an offended growl. “So, you don’t have any faith in me, huh, Ratch? Think I need you to take care of me so I don’t kill myself? We’ve been friends for millions of years and I thought I’d _shown_ you I’m not just a sparkling playing with expensive tools and the laws of physics, but whatever.” The engineer sighed, and the ends of his helm fins turned a weak, shallow pink. “Are you gonna fix me or not? I’d do it myself, but I kind of can’t.”

The heat evaporated from Ratchet instantly. He fumbled for a moment before saying, “…This just could have gone wrong in so many ways that I don’t want to think about.”

The engineer huffed. “Is that the sound of you being worried about me, Ratchet? You’re gettin’ soft on me, ya fossil.” His tone lightened, and if Ratchet could see Wheeljack’s mouth, he’s pretty sure he’d see a little playful smirk.

Ratchet, grateful for Wheeljack’s wordless acceptance of his equally taciturn apology, consciously forced the tension out of his shoulders, determined to let go of his anger and anxiety. Besides, now Sideswipe was struggling to hide a smile, likely a reaction to the awkward atmosphere Ratchet just created by blowing up at Wheeljack like an idiot.

However, Ratchet was definitely miffed at being called “soft”. He said, “I’m not _getting soft_. I’ll leave you like this, maybe stick your head in a jar of preservative and put it in my office.”

“Yeah, sure. You wouldn’t leave me like this.”

“Watch me.” Ratchet turned and made a move to walk back to his office.

Wheeljack, as the medic expected, immediately called out. “Ratch! Jeez! I believe you, alright? I’d really rather not be put on display like some organic freak in a museum.”

Ratchet let out a short bark of a laugh and asked Sideswipe to drop Wheeljack on an exam table while he retrieved the engineer’s thorax. “And by ‘drop’, Sideswipe, I mean literally.”

“Wait, what? Sides, I swear –”

The twin couldn’t resist such a golden opportunity. “You swear you’ll what? Flicker your helm fins at me?”

“ _Sideswipe_ , not you too! You’re my only friend here!”

Just as Ratchet turned the corner and left the medbay, he heard the _clunk_ of several metallic limbs hitting the exam table, punctuated with a _clank_ and an offended squawk from Wheeljack’s head. Ratchet guessed that the engineer’s pride hurt more than his head, what with how thick the engineer’s helm could be.

As the medic walked to the engineering lab for a missing backstrut, he started to think about Wheeljack’s comment. _Was_ he getting soft? He could still look a Decepticon in the optics and blast their processor to pieces without a second thought. He’d taken friends apart and put them back together with the limbs of their dead comrades. He’d held sparks he couldn’t save in his servos as they died, the thrum of life within sputtering and darkening like a dying hearth.

It had been so long since he’d prayed for a dying mech’s soul to find peace in the Allspark. He just didn’t have the energy for it anymore. There’d been so many deaths that it felt like a waste of time, more of a pointless ritual that no longer gave him the closure it once did.

Instead of seeking closure for each innumerable death, he learned exactly how to shut down his emotional protocols right when they dragged him down, and the part of his processor that handled deep bonds and attachment had been underused for so long that he didn’t even know if it still functioned properly. He didn’t care if it did, anyway.

He wasn’t soft. Not a snowball’s chance in Hell was he soft.

(He made a note to thank Sparkplug for that wonderful expression later.)

Ratchet’s train of thought abruptly halted when he entered the lab and saw, in an open space away from any blueprints or work benches, Wheeljack’s torso laying the ground, a little charred but no worse for wear. Ratchet shuddered at the idea of the explosion going far enough to damage or even shatter the engineer’s spark; he was infinitely lucky that Wheeljack’s armour was so strong, forged for this exact situation.

Shaking his head to clear the gory images, Ratchet grabbed Wheeljack’s thorax from the ground with more anger than was probably necessary. He hated how worried he was about the engineer. Wheeljack did things like this all the time, and he was still kicking around – why was Ratchet feeling so much over this?

Slag. Maybe he _was_ getting soft.

The medic huffed, irritated at himself, then turned and left the lab. Well, it wasn’t every day Wheeljack managed to blow off all of his limbs. It was easier to blame his worry on the bizarre circumstance than entertain the notion that he was losing his edge because of some stupid, suicidal engineer.

 

xXx

 

 

Ratchet entered the exam room where Wheeljack – or, most of him – was laying in a haphazard little pile, Sideswipe long gone. He set down the engineer’s torso with only a little more respect than Sideswipe did with the rest of Wheeljack.

Wheeljack had been watching the door, clearly waiting for the medic’s return, and almost beamed at Ratchet once he came in. “Hey, Ratch! So, uh, how much is this gonna hurt?”

The medic smirked. “I’m gonna _make_ it hurt so you don’t pull this slag again.”

 “Ha- _ha_ , Ratchet. What a good medic you are.” Wheeljack rolled his optics. “Don’t you guys take an oath to not cause pain or whatever?”

“Oh, trust me, I won’t be causing pain. I just won’t be doing much to help it.” Ratchet turned to retrieve some tools, replacement parts, and wiring from a cabinet off to the side. He tested the soldering iron, making it hiss and spark ominously before he turned back to Wheeljack.

At Wheeljack’s bluntly horrified expression, he laughed loudly and openly, amused by how much emotion those optics conveyed. “Relax! I’m kidding. I’ll reconnect your head after I put the rest of your body together so you won’t feel me welding everything. Of course, that means you can’t stop me from attaching your left arm to your right side, and vice versa.”

“Oh, really? I’ll tell Prime if you mess with my frame like that,” threatened Wheeljack.

Ratchet flicked on the magnifier in his optics and slotted the base of the engineer’s left thigh back into his acetabulum, resetting the pins and starting to graft the wires back together. Surprisingly, the damage wasn’t too bad; whatever Wheeljack’s prototype did largely just disrupted the stability of the connective material between his joints and wires. “Hmm? You’re gonna tattle on me, Wheeljack? Like a _sparkling_?”

Wheeljack’s optics shone brightly, betraying his enjoyment of their banter. “Yeah, I will. When Prime makes you scrub the washracks with a human toothbrush, I’ll be sneakin’ around the medbay, messing _everything_ up, rubbing engine grease all over everything. Just you wait.”

Ratchet shot a look at Wheeljack, his narrow glare contrasting with his light-hearted smile. “Oh, really? How about I just keep your arms in here, then, and kick you outta here with just your legs?”

Wheeljack’s fins flickered purple and his optics glinted, the sudden suggestiveness of his expression almost stopping Ratchet’s spark. “What are you gonna do with my servos, then, Ratch? Huh? Keep ‘em all to yourself?”

Ratchet realised the implications of his threat with a bolt of humiliation. He tore his attention from Wheeljack and focused intently on the wires he was soldering. “I didn’t mean it _that_ way, you perverted glitch, but if you want to take it there, that’s not my problem.”

Wheeljack snickered. “Doesn’t _sound_ like you think it’s a problem.”

“ _Shut up_ , Wheeljack.” Ratchet pointedly ignored every mental image suddenly materialising in his processor.

The engineer only laughed, a sound Ratchet hated that he loved, and kept any further comments to himself. The two lapsed into an amicable silence as the medic worked, the quiet broken only by the hiss of the soldering iron.

Though he managed to get Wheeljack to shut up for the moment, it didn’t stop the influx of certain _ideas_ in Ratchet’s processor, like how thick and calloused and textured those servos must be after working so long in the lab, how lovely they would feel in his valve –

 _Damnit Ratchet keep it together think about something else_.

He pieced together the last few circuits and moved to the right leg; he carefully allowed himself to ponder, once he got hold of his runaway processor again.

Oh, he knew how much he’d come to _like_ Wheeljack over the past months. He was determined to squash this budding affection for Wheeljack as quick as he could, like drowning the coals of a campfire before it set everything ablaze in the night, but it was already a brushfire out of control. This had been going on for a few weeks now, and he’d been so adamant about ignoring and pretending it didn’t exist that it spiralled out of control.

He glanced up at Wheeljack, who was watching Ratchet’s servos work on his own leg with interest.

Seriously? _Wheeljack_ , of all mechs? Out of _everyone_ on the Ark, his processor picked the most unhinged, recklessly stupid, tactless, creative, ruggedly handsome, brilliant, genuinely funny mech he knew?

… Ratchet almost swore out loud at himself. This was worse than he thought. This had morphed into a full-on crush, an embarrassingly adolescent infatuation that was far too powerful for what it was.

But _why_ did he start feeling this way? Ratchet and Wheeljack had been great friends for a very long time, since Cybertron; Ratchet would repair Wheeljack’s plentiful injuries from experiments and the battlefield, and Wheeljack gave him friendship: the laughter, company, and interaction Ratchet didn’t realise he needed with the hard shifts he worked.

But nothing had ever happened – because of Ratchet.

A bit after they became friends, Wheeljack developed a bit of a thing for Ratchet; it was clear from the occasional innuendo, the way Wheeljack’s optics boldened and brightened when he looked at Ratchet, the brush of fingers against Ratchet’s hips when Wheeljack passed by, too casual to not be on purpose. The medic understood Wheeljack was probably just in it for a quick interface, someone to spend the night with before rolling over to the next. That was why the engineer bothered to spend as much time as he did with Ratchet, the medic reasoned.

Ratchet didn’t really do hookups, strongly preferring that he felt a connection with someone before he shacked up with them. He’d _interfaced_ before, of course, but it was always overcharged one-night stands that left him feeling empty and used when he woke in the morning, barely remembering the night before through the haze of a hangover.

So, he had silently rejected Wheeljack, never reciprocating or taking any flirtatious bait that came up in conversation. There was just no way around that Ratchet wasn’t interested in the engineer outside of friendship – he was certainly attractive and clearly interested, but Ratchet just didn’t feel strongly enough about Wheeljack to frag him. If Ratchet did give in and frag him just because Wheeljack clearly wanted it, it’d be _not right_ in so many ways. Ratchet would feel hollow and empty and used afterwards, and from experience he knew he would withdraw from Wheeljack and ruin their friendship.

He couldn’t do that to himself, and he especially couldn’t do that to Wheeljack.

After a while, the engineer gave up with overt flirting, and even as the two grew closer, Ratchet still couldn’t bring himself to berth Wheeljack. He just never saw the engineer that way. But there was always that shimmer in his optics Wheeljack reserved for Ratchet, and he still made the effort to keep up their friendship despite Ratchet not being interested in anything but. It had troubled the medic more than it probably should have: if it was clear Ratchet wasn’t going to frag him, why did Wheeljack still bother to put up with him? What was the draw? Wheeljack genuinely treated him as a close friend, not with the tight politeness most soldiers treated medics with. It was bizarre, and Ratchet couldn’t figure it out. Even now, he still couldn’t; not that he didn’t greatly appreciate Wheeljack’s friendship.

Even more confusing was why Ratchet – to use the human slang that had crept into his vocabulary – _caught feelings_ for Wheeljack here and now, on Earth, millennia after Wheeljack apparently gave up on him. This crush was absolutely pointless: there was no reason for him to have feelings that were never going to be reciprocated. It was impossible that Wheeljack had any interest in Ratchet outside of hooking up, as Ratchet knew himself to be abrasive, curt, moody, and everything in between: not attractive at all in a romantic sense. Too much time had passed since Wheeljack had any open interest in him, anyways, and if he were to suddenly start flirting with the engineer, it would look desperate and pitiful.

Ratchet sighed in disgust at himself. He supposed that his emotional attachment protocols were still functional, but they were glitched to slag, apparently. All he could do was wait for this to blow over.

Wheeljack’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Everything alright?” he asked, with more than a little concern.

“Hmm? Yeah, just lost in thought.”

There was a sudden silence, and Ratchet glanced up to see Wheeljack’s head peering at him intensely, almost owlishly. The medic was taken aback by Wheeljack’s expression and the fluorescent-bright light in his optics, conveying a complex emotion he couldn’t decipher.

“What?” asked Ratchet, almost snapping as his irritation spiked to mask his confusion and, he hated to admit, the flush rising on his face.

“Nothing! Just worried that everything is… like, gonna go back on correctly.”

The medic huffed a little laugh. “No need to worry. Although, I have no idea how you managed to do _this.”_  Ratchet gestured to the pile that was Wheeljack, his head and arms still waiting to be reattached. “There’s almost no structural damage, save for some melted wires and plastic. It’s almost _too_ easy to put you back together. What kind of reaction did you set off that took you apart so carefully?”

Ratchet wasn’t focused on Wheeljack’s face as he started reattaching his right arm to his thorax, but he did notice the strange pause before he responded. “Honestly, I have no idea. I had to use some Earth metals that I’m not really familiar with; maybe I didn’t refine them enough and the alloy got contaminated with somethin’ else. Pure elements are stupid hard to come by on this planet: everything’s all crystallized together or oxidized and a real pain to purify. Part of having an atmosphere, I guess.”

Ratchet glanced up at Wheeljack’s head, suddenly suspicious. The jargon the engineer layered on at the end didn’t mask the heart of what he said: _I have no idea_. How could such a brilliant and inquisitive engineer not have the slightest idea why he got blown clean apart by his own invention?

Wheeljack was looking away when Ratchet shot a look at him, but the weight of the medic’s skepticism drew his optics to Ratchet’s. When their eyes met, his expression flickered from surprised to confused to defensive in barely a second before he sputtered, “What? I don’t know _everything_ , Ratch. I mean, I’m glad you think I _do._ ”

Ratchet shrugged, still keeping his eyes on Wheeljack as he moved to the engineer’s left arm. “I guess not. At least you’re humble, then, even if you’re reckless to the point of blowing your limbs off.”

Wheeljack laughed. “It was worth it. Helped me test a theory.”

Ratchet didn’t bother to push for details on this vague statement and merely hummed in acknowledgement, immersing himself in his work despite the needling suspicion in the back of his processor. “I hope everything works out with this insane project you have going on, then. Primus knows you have enough crazy plans as it is.”

The engineer laughed a bit. “I hope so, too, old friend. Let’s just hope it doesn’t blow up in my face again.”

 

 

xXx

 

 

Ratchet reattached the rest of Wheeljack’s limbs without a hitch. The only thing that went wrong was when Wheeljack, unaccustomed to having legs again, stumbled like a newborn deer and fell face-first into Ratchet’s arms. After scrambling out of the medic’s grasp as his fins burned an embarrassingly neon pink, Wheeljack turned to leave. The engineer wanted to stay with the medic, very much so, but couldn’t find a reason to stay in the medbay any longer. Trying to find an excuse to linger would be suspicious and probably intrusive.

“Thanks, Ratch,” Wheeljack called on his way out. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“I try. Ping me if you need anything; my schedule is wide open.” Wheeljack couldn’t help but notice the dismissive note in his voice and how Ratchet avoided his optics.

Upon leaving the medbay, the engineer didn’t go straight back to his lab, nor to his own quarters. Instead, he went straight to Sideswipe’s room, where the mech in question was waiting impatiently for him. He opened the door almost immediately when Wheeljack pinged him.

“That took a while,” said the frontliner implicatively. “Anything happen?”

“Well – no. Slag, Sides, _nothing_ happened,” Wheeljack said, his shoulders slumping. He looked up at Sideswipe defeatedly like a stray dog lost in the rain.

“No. Oh, _no_ , don’t give me that face, ‘Jack. Get in.” Sideswipe moved out of the door frame so Wheeljack could follow him in and slid it shut behind him.

The engineer sat heavily down on Sideswipe and Sunstreaker’s berth. “I don’t know if this is gonna work. I feel like I’m chasing my tail like a lovesick turbopuppy.”

“No, it’s going to work. He just needs encouragement. Primus knows nothing has gone right for him for millennia, especially with the war. He’s always been reserved, and he’s only gotten even more closed-off over time.” Sideswipe crawled between Wheeljack’s legs to get under the berth and fished out two cubes of high-grade.

“I don’t know. I couldn’t get a read on him, I don’t think he –”

“No. Shut up and listen.” Sideswipe offered Wheeljack one of the high-grades, which the engineer accepted thankfully. “I was kind of spying on you two from the hallway once he came back with your thorax; I heard everything first-hand. _Everything_ , from his tone to the things he says, is different from how he treats anyone else _._ You’re different to him, ‘Jack, and I can see it in his optics. He’s changed. It’s subtle, but clear: he feels something for you. Shame he couldn’t figure it out sooner, but what matters is that you have a shot _now_.”

The engineer sighed into his cube. He didn’t reply, instead taking a long sip of the high-grade.

Sideswipe plopped gracelessly down next to Wheeljack on the berth. “I know what you’re thinking: this whole shenanigan was a complete waste of time if nothing came of it.”

At this, Wheeljack glanced over at Sideswipe’s desk across the room, where he had been carefully dismantled by the frontliner not three hours ago. Various tools were splayed out among the stains of energon that had dribbled from Wheeljack’s lines before Sideswipe could cauterise them; the scene looked a bit like a primitive dissection table and made the engineer cringe a bit in memory.

The two concocted this plan of fabricating an exploded Wheeljack to test Sideswipe’s hunch that Ratchet returned the engineer’s feelings. It wasn’t the _best_ plan, but when Sideswipe first mentioned that Ratchet was acting differently around the engineer, Wheeljack got a little hasty. He was beyond eager to have some indication that the medic returned his long-held crush, and he came up with a plan almost on the spot.

And, of course, Sideswipe was all too happy to indulge the engineer.

As he was taken apart, all Wheeljack felt was a sharp pinch when Sideswipe disconnected his sensory circuitry; but the thick haze of trepidation and self-doubt was worse than any physical pain and made him sick to his tanks. While Sideswipe offlined his peripheral circuit systems one by one, he wondered if this was even worth it, to do something like this based on Ratchet’s subtle indication that he may, after so long, return Wheeljack’s feelings.

It was _stupid_ , he knew. But he couldn’t shake his feelings for the medic, and the idea of any reciprocation almost made him dizzy with hope.

Sideswipe's voice pulled Wheeljack out of his thoughts and back to the present, where he was now freshly put back together. “But something _did_ happen. Even if it wasn’t big, we know a lot more now than we did before. I’m not a scientist like you, but I think I know how important _testing a hypothesis_ is, and that was our main goal. We learned that he _likes_ you, especially after hearing the stuff he said to you in the medbay.  Like, the thing with him keeping your servos? I could _hear_ how flustered he was. If I was there, I _know_ I would have seen his face turn a lovely shade of purple, like a lovestruck sparkling.

“Not just that, but we achieved our other goal to keep you at the front of his processor. He was damn worried about you, and he’s gonna be thinking about you for days. I really hope you didn’t expect him to do something dramatic like taking your decapitated head in his arms and snogging it, ‘Jack.”

Wheeljack chortled. “Well, no, but I hoped for a little more than being kicked out with a ‘ping me if you need me’.”

“What? He said that?” Sideswipe dropped his forehead to his servo with a groan, exasperated. “Wheeljack, you’re being really dense, and I have no idea why. Do you know Ratchet at all? Like, he would _never_ invite someone to ping him. He hates being pinged. Always holed up in his office when he’s on shift, doesn’t like to be disturbed. He’d bitch about it if _Optimus_ pinged him.” At this, Wheeljack snorted. “It’s so different from how he was before. He probably doesn’t even have any idea that you’ve been thinking about him for this long. Probably thinks he has a crush that’ll fade if he doesn’t do anything about it. You need to step up your game before you miss your chance.”

“I just – slag, Sides, I don’t know.”

“Yeah, okay, that’s great, but I do. I _know_ you have a shot here, and you need to take that shot before he purges his emotion protocols or something. He hates having emotions, and it won’t take long before he buries this with all the others.” Sideswipe turned fully to the engineer and looked him directly in the optics.

“Do you trust me, Wheeljack?”

Wheeljack sighed. He knew the frontliner was a prankster, but it was easy to tell when he was being serious. Sideswipe also had a knack for seeing the hidden emotions and little tells that mechs didn’t know they had; it came naturally, with him being so extroverted. The chances that Sideswipe was mistaken about Ratchet or messing with Wheeljack were slim to none.

Sideswipe also loved a good romance. Few mechs knew this, but he’d do anything for two star-crossed mechs; especially for a pair who were as dense and helpless with emotions like Wheeljack and Ratchet.

“Fine. I trust you, Sides, and I need your help.”

The frontliner laughed. “Oh, I know you do, buddy. We’re gonna get there. Just be patient.”

Wheeljack snorted and inclined his drink towards Sideswipe. “A toast, or whatever it is the humans do. To Ratchet.”

Sideswipe held up a finger, leaning his cube away from Wheeljack’s. “Let me amend that: to Ratchet finally pulling his head out of his aft after millennia of not noticing you.”

The engineer laughed and thrust his cube in the air, almost spilling the energon. “To Sideswipe the matchmaker!”

“And finally, to _you_ , Wheeljack, for letting me in on this!”

“Sure, sure, whatever! Cheers.” The two laughed as they clunked their cubes together in a Cybertronian mockery of human culture, and they polished off their drinks with practiced ease.

Wheeljack coughed a bit after he drained his cube. “Damn, you distilled the frag out of this. I really didn’t plan on getting torqued tonight, but this one cube may’ve already gotten me buzzed.”

“Oh, really? Let’s _experiment_ with how much of a heavyweight you are, then, Mr. Scientific Engineer.”

“Sides, it’s been a while since I had _any_ high-grade. No way I can hold my energon like I used to. You’re gonna take me straight to the slag pit.”

Sideswipe was already on his knees to crawl under the berth for another round, but at this comment he settled back onto his haunches and thought for a minute. “You’re right. I haven’t really seen you drinking since the victory party.” He feigned genuinely thinking about stopping at one drink for a moment, then dove under his berth with a wild grin. His voice was muffled from underneath the berth: “All the more reason for you to drink! Come on, unwind from all this Ratchet slag. You’re fun to drink with, anyway, and it’s been too long since I’ve gone one-on-one with someone.”

The frontliner crawled back out from under the berth and shoved another cube in Wheeljack’s servos. The engineer made no move to reject it but didn’t drink immediately. “Aren’t I gonna drain all your high-grade?”

“Don’t underestimate how much free time Sunny and I’ve had since we stomped the ‘cons. There’s enough down there to get you, me, Prime, _and_ Trailbreaker completely plastered.”

“…Is Sunny gonna get mad when I eventually pass out here? Do I have to make it to my own berth somehow?”

“Please. Sunny’s harmless, and he’s used to me being passed out on the floor. He’ll be fine with one more on the floor for the night. Now, shut up and drink, ‘cause if you don’t, it’s just more for me and it’ll be _your_ fault when I short myself out.” Sideswipe leaned in mischievously and hissed, “I’ll tell Ratchet you let me get so overcharged I fried my processor.”

Wheeljack raised a servo in a placating gesture as if doing Sideswipe a favour by drinking his high-grade. “Don’t gotta tell me twice.” He drank half his cube with two huge swallows; he only had a moment to think about what a headache the morning would bring, as drinks with the frontliner always did, before the cottony haze of a nascent overcharge set in. The noise of his logic was muffled with banter and laughter soaked with high-grade and, above all, memories of Ratchet and his candy-red and glossy-white plating, intoxicating all by itself to look at.

 

 

xXx

 

 

“Wheeljack.”

“What?”

“Ratchet’s _really_ hot,” said Sideswipe.

“I _know_ , Sides. Please, I know.” It was a moment before Wheeljack’s optics could focus on the shells of discarded cubes on the floor, but once he did, he slowly counted them up.

…Eight. Eight cubes on the ground. _Frag_ , how had he drunk eight cubes already? That was insane! How was he still online?!

Wait. No. There were two mechs here. Eight divided by two was four. They’d both drunk four. That was much more reasonable.

Sideswipe interrupted Wheeljack’s mental gymnastics. “If you don’t get your servos on him, I’m dragging him to my berth. I’ve had my eyes on that beautiful red aft for a while now.”

“NO. No, you can’t, he’s mine, I’m gonna frag him ‘til he can’t see straight, mark my words, Sides –”

“You gotta let me watch, then, _please_ record it –”

“– then I’m gonna snuggle the slag outta him. We’re gonna be so cute together. _He’s_ so cute, Sideswipe, I don’t wanna let him go. Spark a’ gold, the most loyal and thoughtful mech I know, but he hides it like the dusty old mech he is. All reserved and paranoid and whatev’r. So damn pretty, with that red n’ white, too; he could have anyone in this whole spacecraft, but he doesn’t even try and he’s so _stupid_ Sideswipe how is he even still alive.”

Sideswipe stared blankly at Wheeljack as he slowly processed his rant. Then, he suddenly collapsed into giggles that morphed into full-on laughter that snowballed out of control. He laughed and kept laughing until he could barely make a noise, curled around himself with his knees drawn up, shaking silently in laughter. Wheeljack started laughing too, sparked by the sheer force of Sideswipe’s hysterics, and he quickly descended into the same fit Sideswipe was caught in.

Sunstreaker groaned loudly from across the room, looking up from his sketchbook to glare at the pair. “Couldn’t you have picked Wheeljack’s room to get plastered in? Or, you know, anywhere else but here?” Despite the annoyance in his voice, there was little heat in his tone, betraying his amusement at the two overcharged mechs.

Sideswipe regained control of himself for a moment to blurt out, “I’m sorry! Wheeljack’s just got it _bad_!” before he fell into helpless giggles again, this time rolling off the berth onto the floor.

The golden twin rolled his optics and returned to his sketchbook. “I should’ve spent the night at Mirage’s instead of coming back here,” he mumbled.

Wheeljack shot a defensive glare at Sideswipe, about to retort, but melted into more laughter as he pressed a servo against his forehead. “I got it bad, I really do. And I have no idea how to move forward wi’ this.”

“Pfft.” Sideswipe rolled his optics. “You’ll figure it out. You’re a genius.”

“Ain’t no genius. More useless than a fraggin’… a fraggin’… _crocodile_ when it comes to slag like this.” Wheeljack’s vernacular grew proportionally thicker with each cube he drank and by now, he was sure Sideswipe had to work a bit to understand him. He couldn’t be bothered to rein it back in, though; it sounded hilarious, even to himself, and he had no doubt that Sideswipe found it as amusing as he did.

He would be embarrassed that Sideswipe was holding his energon so much better than him if he didn’t know how heavy of a drinker Sideswipe was. Four cubes would be enough to short-circuit Cliffjumper, but four was a good night for the frontliner. His resilience and sheer strength were obvious not just on the battlefield, but also in how his sturdy frame held up against floods of high-grade. Wheeljack found himself impressed.

The frontliner chortled and rolled over onto his back with the grace of a beached seal, looking up at Wheeljack on the berth. “Oh, come _on_. The story you made up to Ratchet was incredible; you did it on the fly _and_ you were under pressure. Jazz would be jealous.” Sideswipe waved a servo dismissively. “Besides, we’ve got your intelligence and my _everything else_ working for us. It’s gonna be fine. Let it happen naturally, ‘Jack.”

Wheeljack groaned and slid bonelessly off the berth to join Sideswipe on the floor, his vision whirling pleasantly like he was in a watercolour painting.  “Okay, yeah, but _why_ did he have to wait, like, a thousand years before decidin’ to recip – reciprocate,” fumbled Wheeljack, glossa heavy. “We’re gonna ignore that I couldn’t get my stupid aft over him in that period a’ time. Why is he just figuring this out _now?”_

“Because he’s an idiot,” said Sideswipe simply.

The engineer squinted at the ceiling, pondering this as he carefully took a long sip of a cube he grabbed off the floor. Despite his best efforts, he dribbled a little bit on his neck, thanks to the awkward angle he was trying to drink at.

After a moment of deep reflection, he said, “Sideswipe… You’re a genius. That’s _exactly_ what Ratchet is.”

The frontliner laughed at the heavy reverence in Wheeljack’s voice, as thick as if the engineer were face-to-face with Primus himself. He clumsily reached over and tried to pat the engineer on the shoulder, but missed and ended up gently slapping Wheeljack’s face instead. “We’re _both_ geniuses. That’s what we learned tonight.”

Wheeljack laughed and reached up and over Sideswipe’s arm to pat the frontliner on the face as well. For a moment, the two laid on the floor and patted each other’s faces with a childlike happiness sticky with high-grade, arms awkwardly weaved around each other on the floor like a Celtic knot.

“Tomorrow,” began Sideswipe, “we don’t even have to blow you up again to get you in the medbay. You’re super overcharged, and you’ll be a wreck in the morning. Just drag yourself to Ratchet’s office and he’ll take you off your duty shift or something.”

“No, no, I’m not gonna be hungover. I don’t get hangovers. I’m not as overcharged as _you_ are,” accused Wheeljack haughtily.

Sideswipe snickered. “I can barely understand you.”

“…I’m really overcharged. Your fraggin’ cubes snuck up on me.” Wheeljack rolled himself out of Sideswipe’s reach and onto his side, where he curled up like a housecat, huffing a bit in pain as he clumsily landed on one of his shoulder wings.

“Wait. The berth is _right there_. I didn’t mean you had to _actually_ pass out on the floor earlier.”

“But your floor… is comfy. Smells like Sunny’s polish.” He paused a moment before jumping to a different subject entirely. “This was such a good idea.”

“What was a good idea, ‘Jack?” Sideswipe was already pulling him up by his arms to deposit him on the berth. Internally, Wheeljack thanked him for being so nice – or just for being better than him at holding his energon.

“This,” mumbled Wheeljack as he gestured widely with a servo, waving it around as if conducting an orchestra. “Getting you to help me. Making you disassemble me. High-grade. … _Especially_ high-grade.”

  Sideswipe tugged him easily up onto his oversize berth as he laughed gently at Wheeljack’s inebriation. “It’s, like, five hours before I have to be on shift, and six before you do. Shut up and recharge. You can thank me later.”

Wheeljack had no reason to disobey, and he fell easily into a dreamless recharge, the purplish haze of overcharge blanketing him as Sideswipe shifted around on the berth. His mind was pleasantly blank, the quietest it had been in a very long time, and he fell into his processor’s silence as happily as collapsing onto a downy mattress, easily slipping out of consciousness as the frontliner settled in beside him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please critique and correct me, especially my characterisation and how I use Transformers slang/vocabulary. God knows I need it


	2. Chapter 2

Wheeljack awoke slowly, his processor complaining and stuttering like a rusty hinge the whole way back to consciousness.

He remembered last night easily enough. He didn’t drink enough to black out, just enough to cotton the details. At least he hadn’t humiliated himself _too_ much – just made it embarrassingly clear how strong his crush on Ratchet was. Fortunately, it was only Sideswipe and Sunstreaker who knew, although he didn’t know how long it would take before one of the twins eventually spilled.

Oh, his head hurt: a keening ache that dug into the front of his processor with blunt fingers and throbbed when he moved or blinked. He’d certainly had worse, but this didn’t feel good. At all.

A watery memory came to him, of Sideswipe telling him to crawl back to the medbay once his hangover set in. It wasn’t a bad idea; he’d be able to get a painkiller or something and, of course, he’d see Ratchet again. If Sideswipe’s hunch that Ratchet returned his feelings was true, then maybe Wheeljack would actually get a response if he flirted with him – even if flirting felt like an impossible level of cognitive function at the moment.

He slowly rolled over and cracked open his optics, noting that Sideswipe and Sunstreaker were already gone. The twins had an earlier duty shift than his, he remembered; by the residual heat beside him, he knew he had some time before he was to be on-shift.

Wheeljack, more than anything, wanted to skip his shift and lay in Sideswipe’s berth, Ratchet or not; the temptation was so strong it felt like wet tar gluing him to the sheets. He wasn’t going to be productive like this, anyway.

But Prowl worried him. The third-in-command had been more high-strung than a violin as the lull in action stretched on, the polar opposite of the rest of the Autobots. Prowl would turn a blind eye to heavy drinking after a rough battle, but if Wheeljack went out with a hangover after a stretch of peace? He’d never let that slide. Not only would Prowl interrogate and lecture Wheeljack on why he was drinking when a Decepticon threat could be just around the corner, but he’d also be putting Sideswipe and his glorious stockpile of high-grade in danger.

His only option, then, really was to get Ratchet to quietly take him off the schedule with his power as chief medical officer.

With a sigh that faded into a groan at the end, he rolled his way to the edge of the berth and scooted off it gracelessly. He stumbled to the door and stepped out, squinting at the sharpness of the hallway lights. Despite the ache in his processor, he made the conscious effort to straighten up and try to not look as bad as he felt even if he felt like someone just threw him in a wood chipper.

He really hoped Ratchet wouldn’t be stingy with the painkillers.

 

 

xXx

 

 

Ratchet had _just_ reserved a spot at the shooting range and was getting ready to leave his shift early, reports finally finished and desk as clean as it was going to get, when this godforsaken engineer had stumbled in pathetically like a cadet after his first party asking to be taken off the schedule.

He made sure to level every bit of that sentiment into the scowl he aimed at Wheeljack.

But, of _course,_ he couldn’t just shove him out of the medbay and order him on shift, because his spark was experiencing some _attachment issues_ and leapt painfully at the idea of kicking Wheeljack out.

Primus. How embarrassing, that someone like him had to deal with a crush. It was mortifying to even think about, let alone that the adolescence and immaturity a crush implied had attached itself to him.

Ratchet grimaced and pinched the bridge of his olfactory ridge as Wheeljack, voice rough and staticky, continued to rattle off apologies and promises of favours.

At first, the medic wanted to be tough on the engineer like he would with anyone else, but his resolve melted quicker than an ice cube in a desert. His logic, tinted with infatuation, spoke reassuringly to him: all he would have to do was let him lay down for a bit out of the light with a pain vial and some rehydration fluids, then he could force the engineer out as soon as he stopped looking so pathetic. It would be _fine_ ; he would barely have to interact with Wheeljack. There wouldn’t be a chance to say anything embarrassing or compromising.

Ratchet huffed and waved a servo to silence Wheeljack, still rabbiting on in the background. “Fine, fine. You look terrible. I’ll let you lay down in the back room with the lights off and I’ll get a painkiller. I’ll log that you spent some time here so I can authorise a half-day on the schedule.”

The pure relief and almost veneration that filled Wheeljack’s hazy optics was enough to make Ratchet’s spark melt into protometal. Bubbling-hot affection and terrible regret for making eye contact with Wheeljack clashed uncomfortably in Ratchet’s processor.

“Thanks, Ratch. I owe you one,” said Wheeljack, with the most warm, genuine gratefulness Ratchet had ever heard.

 _Damnit_ , if Ratchet didn’t get this engineer out right _now_ , he was going to kiss him right here, right now, blast mask be damned, and if all Wheeljack cared for was a frag then he’d have it, pathetic untended romantic need a problem for another day –

“Don’t mention it. I’ll be there in a second,” said the medic, voice clipped and gruff but audibly tight as he halted that derailing train of thought. Primus, his face felt hotter than the Pit, so hot he was sure his entire body would combust quicker than any rocket fuel known to science. He looked away from Wheeljack dismissively and started to gather the few datapads still left out, doing everything he could with his body language to kick the engineer out of his suddenly-too-small office, save for actually booting Wheeljack in the aft.

But, of course, the engineer couldn’t take a hint. He glanced up to see the tips of Wheeljack’s fingers resting on his desk to get his attention, and he made the mistake of looking up and into Wheeljack’s optics. His processor stuttered at the look in them: they were so honeyed and warm, like he was looking at a project of his that actually worked, and _confident_ , just short of cocky despite the obvious glaze of a hangover.

“See you in a bit,” Wheeljack said, softly, as if sharing a secret.

He turned and walked out, stumbling only a little bit.

As Wheeljack’s footsteps faded, Ratchet felt completely lost and uprooted in the vacuum that suddenly swallowed his office.

Frantic thoughts spun circles around his processor. Did Wheeljack _know_? He had to know. The way he looked at Ratchet just now –

No, Wheeljack’s hungover, that could’ve been how glazed-over he looks –

 _Wait_. Ratchet’s processor lurched to a halt as dread bit down on his spark.

Whether or not Wheeljack knew about Ratchet’s crush before walking into his office, no mech on Earth nor Cybertron could miss the purple of his face, still burning hotter than a supernova. Short of being completely colourblind, there was no way Wheeljack didn’t notice him blushing like a sparkling. Ratchet cringed, mortified – Ratchet already hated himself for having a crush he couldn’t control, and the idea of even a single other mech being privy to it was almost unbearable. His embarrassment worsened at the fact that it was _Wheeljack_ , his close _friend_ for the past millions of years, especially after knowing the engineer’s past feelings for him.

Ratchet sighed despairingly, reeling as his processor leapt from horrified to hopeful to humiliated in the span of a second. Out of habit, he raised a servo to his forehead in exasperation and frowned at the heat still lingering there.

His only hope was that Wheeljack, by some miracle, didn’t notice.

 

 

xXx

 

 

Wheeljack _absolutely_ noticed, and he was about to blow a diode with how hard it was to keep from laughing out loud in the hallway. Whether he wanted to laugh in sheer joy or at Ratchet’s clear embarrassment, an emotion he rarely saw on the medic and so beautifully painted in purple, he didn’t know and didn’t care to.

There was no way he could miss the vibrant hue that had first bloomed on Ratchet’s neck and crept onto his face when they made eye contact, but what sealed it was the look in Ratchet’s optics, the veneer of irritability over a hidden spark in his expression. It all confirmed his and Sideswipe’s suspicion: there was only one thing that could get Ratchet so flustered, and it couldn’t be over the handful of paper bird-looking-things he apparently left out on his desk.

Not to mention how, recently, he’d managed to get away with things that would normally make Ratchet yell impatiently or blow him off. There was a grain of warmth behind Ratchet’s subtle allowances, and no matter many layers of Ratchet-ness he wrapped it in, that core sentiment was still there – and saved entirely for Wheeljack.

Wheeljack was, to use an Earth phrase, completely over the moon.

He entered the small exam room and sat on the berth there, too elated to care about the lumps in the mattress. Yes, his head hurt and his coordination was shot and his frame was as sore as if he got in a fight with Ironhide, but nothing could dim the light of the fact that _Ratchet returned his feelings_. He’d never been so happy that Sideswipe was actually right about something.

Wheeljack noticed he was kicking his pedes back and forth like a hyperactive sparkling. He stilled them and tried to rein in his glee, but he still felt like he grabbed a live wire, making little sparks run between the seams of his plating and down into his internals.

He had wanted Ratchet so badly for millennia, his feelings going far beyond just wanting to frag him. They’d been friends for ages, but Ratchet had only really started to open up to him in the last ten thousand or so; the little bits of the true Ratchet, underneath all that prickliness and behind all those walls, only made Wheeljack care even more about him. Wheeljack wanted all of the medic: his harshness and moods and how much of an aft he could be, along with his loyalty and honesty and how genuine he was.

Well, he could do without Ratchet being such a cork in the tailpipe sometimes. But Ratchet wouldn’t be _Ratchet_ if he wasn’t harsh. Like when Gears had his personality circuits hijacked and turned _nice_ – it should’ve been appealing to have Gears at least somewhat likeable, but even _Ironhide_ was horrified that the minibot didn’t call him a rusty scrapbucket during his own rescue. Ironhide! _Horrified!_

That crankiness was a part of Gears, and it wouldn’t be right to change a mech just to make them more appealing, just as it was with Ratchet. He couldn’t imagine either Gears or Ratchet changing to benefit anyone else. After all, it was that blunt harshness that made Ratchet such a good medic, friend, and soldier, all in one: always willing to call it like he sees it, keenly perceptive, sharp-witted and sharp-tongued.

Wheeljack heard Ratchet’s steps coming down the hall and almost broke out into laughter. He was _absolutely_ going to have some fun with this – that brilliant shade of purple was something he’d never seen before, and it gave him a thrill to see a blushing Ratchet. He wanted to see it again.

The medic entered with a bag of rehydration fluids and a small vial of a clear liquid painkiller, more straight-backed and stoic than Wheeljack had seen him in a while. There was some light lavender lingering on his face, only noticeable as the engineer was looking for it, but it still made Wheeljack smile under his blast mask.

Ratchet looked over at Wheeljack inquisitively as he popped the cap on the fluid bag and drew the line from it. “I thought I told you to lay down. Feeling better so soon, now that I’m so kindly about to cut your shift in half?”

Wheeljack chuckled, watching Ratchet’s face keenly as he followed the unspoken order and laid down. “I’m not ditching my shift, if that’s what you’re saying. I really do feel like garbage.” That wasn’t a lie – the only reason he could focus on Ratchet was the dimmed lighting in the room.

“Mm. You still look like garbage, I’ll give you that. And you smell like the Twins’ after a party.”

“For as much as I look and feel like trash, though, I gotta say that you’re looking damn fine. A sight for sore optics,” said Wheeljack, letting just enough suggestiveness slide into his tone.

Ratchet shot him an almost startled look, and – oh, would you look at that, his neck was starting to flush purple again. Wheeljack grinned under his mask and propped himself up on his forearms, feeling giddy and _powerful_. He rarely had admirers and it always flattered him when he caught wind of it, whether he returned the sentiment or not. But Ratchet was _special_ , and to see him so easily flustered purely because of Wheeljack made the engineer’s spark flip.

Ratchet, smoothly recovering himself, rolled his optics and quickly hooked the fluids up to an auxiliary line along Wheeljack’s side. He roughly tugged the engineer’s arm straight and gave the vial in a port in Wheeljack’s inner elbow. “I look the same today as I always do, Wheeljack. I can tell you that.”

Wheeljack sighed deeply as the painkiller hit his lines, quieting his headache from a roar to a whine. The sudden relief was incredible; he hadn’t realised how bad his processor hurt until he could hear himself think again.

He promised himself he’d never go drink-for-drink with Sideswipe ever again.

The engineer fell fully back on the berth, leaden with fatigue, but he couldn’t resist getting another comment in to Ratchet. “Since I’m gonna take a nap in just a second here, you wanna borrow my servos? I know you wanted to use them yesterday, and I figure you’re going off-shift early…” Wheeljack waggled his fingers at Ratchet. “Unless you’d prefer them still attached to me. I’m sore and I have a headache, but I’m not completely useless.”

Ratchet made a choked noise and gave Wheeljack a harsh, shocked glare. “Knock it off, ‘Jack,” he warned.

Wheeljack shrank back a little. “Woah. Did I cross a line? I thought I was reading you right.”

Ratchet huffed and looked away, looking pained. “No, you’re not _wrong_ – just… I’m not – frag it all, Wheeljack, I’m not what you’re looking for, I can tell you that. Knock it off.”

Wheeljack sat up. “I actually don’t want to knock it off. Because I _really_ like you, Ratchet, I have for a while, and you being cryptic and awkward ain’t helping us any.” The medic frowned sharply with a face still flushed endearingly purple, somehow expressing two completely different emotions at the same time. “I don’t want this to get swept under the rug and I ignore how I feel about you for the rest of time. At the very least, I want to _talk_ about this so I can move on or something. Look, I know how weird you get about stuff like this –”

“I don’t get _weird_ about this stuff –”

“You’re being weird right now!” Wheeljack laughed a bit, but there was a hint of exasperation in his voice. He should have known this was coming.

“You know what? Fine.” Ratchet’s voice hardened. “I _am_ being weird, because I know you’re only doing all this _scrap_ for a hookup and, frankly, I’m not interested. I know exactly what you want from me and it’s not something I can give you.” Ratchet’s voice lowered as he leaned in, almost growling. “And you’re doing this after coming hungover from ‘spending the night’ at the twins’? Seriously, Wheeljack?”

Wheeljack balked, appalled at what Ratchet was implying. “I didn’t do anything with Sides last night, and I haven’t done anything with _either_ of them in a long time, Ratch! I’m not slimy like that in the first place, alright, I _don’t_ flip from one berth to next and I never have, but I’d _never_ do that to you because I know you hate being treated like a drone, Ratchet. I know that. _You_ _know_ that I know.

“So, even though that _stung_ , what’s actually going on? The frag is wrong with you? This is the second time you’ve been an aft to me in the span of two days, and I’m trying real hard to be patient, but it’s starting to make me feel like all I do is piss you off whenever I talk to you.”

Ratchet glanced away, but his voice was still full of heat. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. You weren’t supposed to even know about this. What was _supposed_ to happen was that we both ignored this until it went away, and we keep being friends like we’ve always been.”

“Well, what’s wrong with being more than friends? You haven’t said that you _don’t_ want to be something more.”

The medic looked at him like the idea was completely insane, throwing Wheeljack off. Yes, Wheeljack had many insane ideas, he’d freely admit that, but romance seemed like a perfectly natural, normal progression when two mechs developed feelings for one another. Nothing seemed insane about that. Wheeljack was struggling to see the problem here.

“It’s – not that _simple_ , Wheeljack,” stuttered Ratchet.

Wheeljack threw his servos in the air. “What if it _is_ that simple and you’re just making it stupidly complicated?” He could feel his headache starting to come back, but he didn’t dare ask for another painkiller.

The engineer blinked in realisation as two and two together came together. He dropped his servos and looked at Ratchet softly. “You actually think I couldn’t possibly like you for _you?”_

When Ratchet gave him a tack-sharp glare full of acid, strong enough to make even Grimlock stand down, he knew he hit it on the nose.

“Ratchet, I –”

“No. Quit it. There’s plenty of other unbonded mechs on this ship, and I’m sure any of them can do a better job than I can.” Ratchet paused. “Your modified shift starts three hours after your normal start time. Don’t be even a second late, or Prowl _will_ be looking for you, and I won’t stop him.”

With that, Ratchet stalked out.

The engineer stared at the empty space where Ratchet was, reeling in the strange atmosphere left behind. Slowly, he laid back down on the berth and shuttered his optics, somehow completely drained of energy within ten minutes.

He was so confused. He couldn’t even figure out who to blame for what just happened. Who fragged it up? Was Wheeljack too forward, or was it Ratchet for being so sharply guarded that it hurt himself and everyone around him? Did _both_ of them frag it up; or maybe _neither_ were at fault for the total fragging of the situation?

Wheeljack ran a servo down his face. Whoever was at fault for the heart of the problem, it remained that Wheeljack _started_ it. He just thought he was doing something good for Ratchet. The medic was closed-off to the point of putting on a façade of crankiness just to keep others at a distance, and it was so painfully obvious that it made Wheeljack’s spark ache with empathy – and made him want to yell at Ratchet for being so dense. He thought explaining to Ratchet that he did genuinely, honestly _like_ him would give Ratchet an opportunity to put his guard down for once, but Wheeljack didn’t even get the chance with how hard Ratchet shut him down.

He’d hoped that Ratchet wouldn’t react this way. He’d let hope fill him so much when he caught wind of Ratchet’s crush that he hadn’t factored in the most important part: Ratchet’s reaction to his _own_ emotions. That negligence had blown everything up impressively.

Sure, emotions could be controlled, but control never meant they were completely wiped away. That didn’t mean much to Ratchet, though, who practically made it a pastime to try and extinguish what he felt instead of dealing with it in a normal way. Naturally, Ratchet was trying desperately to stifle his crush on Wheeljack instead of… doing anything else. _Literally_ anything else. Talking about it? Flirting back? Even just _rejecting_ Wheeljack rather than dancing around the very obvious elephant in the room?

Despite what he knew about Ratchet, Wheeljack found himself a little mad at the medic – and hurt. It would’ve been lightyears better if they could just have a single five-minute conversation about where to go from here. They’d had far, far worse conversation topics, from war crimes to the first of their friends to die to how Wheeljack’s recklessness could cost him optics or arms or life – a favourite of theirs.

Did Ratchet really not trust Wheeljack at all, to not even talk to him about something normal? Was Wheeljack so much of an idiot that Ratchet thought he couldn’t give the slightest amount of effort towards empathy?

He knew that in reality, Ratchet didn’t think this at all, but Wheeljack couldn’t help thinking it.

Either way, ruminating didn’t change the fact that he needed Ratchet to be okay with not only talking to Wheeljack about their little _situation_ , but being together in general. There was no way that Wheeljack would force Ratchet into a relationship, or even just to open up. Not that he _could_ , anyway.

Wheeljack wasn’t going to chase Ratchet. He wasn’t that kind of mech, and he didn’t think Ratchet would take kindly to it, either. The engineer had laid all his cards on the table and, hopefully, made it clear what he felt, even if Ratchet was still (frustratingly) playing close to his chest. It was ultimately up to the medic to decide what to do from here.

Wheeljack rolled over on his side, his headache rattling around his processor like a rock in a tumbler. A nap sounded very, _very_ good right now, and he set his chronometer to wake him in two hours.

After some thought, he figured it was unlikely Ratchet would open up enough to talk, so Wheeljack resigned himself to sweeping his feelings away again for the next million years. This time, though, he only regretted that he didn’t think everything through enough.

 

 

xXx

 

 

Ratchet stormed to the shooting range, immensely thankful that he didn’t pass anyone on his way. After Wheeljack had riled him up in the medbay, he was ready to kill someone for the chance to blow off some steam. At this hour – the last half of alpha shift – there would be few mechs there, affording him some peace and solitude to clear his processor.

He was determined to spend the next hour focusing solely on shooting target after target; he had no desire to ruminate about Wheeljack because he _knew_ he fragged up tremendously. He wanted a reprieve from the nagging guilt and shame gnawing at his processor, and nothing quieted his mind like a rifle and a battery of targets: no danger, all skill.

Just a moment of peace would let him think through his next step with Wheeljack – if there even was one.

Pulling his favourite blaster off the rental wall – a laser rifle with no scope, only an old-fashioned open sight – he took the spot almost at the very end of the gallery. He hoped his spot and powerful aura of “don’t-talk-to-me” would ward off small talk if anyone else came in. Ratchet was sure he’d tear someone’s head off if anyone asked how his day was right now.

Bringing the rifle’s sight to his optic, he felt himself relax along the grip as he eyed the first target in front of him. Precision: that was all that was needed of him right now. No thought, no emotion, no words, just steady servos and a keen optic, guiding the laser bullet to the heart of the bulls-eye painted on each target. It was, in a way, like working in the medbay, except with no lives on the line and no comrades begging for him to save their friends’ lives first, their lives second.

He pulled the trigger and blew a hole in the first target, just off centre of the bulls-eye, before it was replaced with a fresh one. Ratchet rolled his optics; if he were on Cybertron, there’d be virtual targets that wouldn’t require constant replacing. It’d normally irk him that a target had only one use, the very definition of wasted resources; but at this moment, he didn’t care. His processor was set on one goal: to shoot more holes than Earth’s moon had craters in every target the shooting gallery had.

Somewhere around his sixth target, he noted Sideswipe come in. The two didn’t talk, but when he glanced over at Sideswipe, the frontliner held his gaze for just a second too long, Sideswipe’s optics looking almost concerned and surprised. It almost made Ratchet growl with barely-restrained irritation, but he couldn’t find a reason to tell Sideswipe to frag off, especially since Sideswipe picked a spot on the opposite side of the gallery, far from the medic.

Ratchet snorted to himself at Sideswipe’s choice to stay far from him. He really did wear his heart on his sleeve, didn’t he?

He shot a gaping hole in the next target, dead-centre; his third bulls-eye so far. Despite his agitation, he smiled a bit into the rifle’s barrel.

After blowing through twenty or so targets, he called it a day. He’d gotten damn close to the bulls-eye each time, if he didn’t nail it – not his best, not at all, but acceptable.

Ratchet passed by Sideswipe on his way out; the two didn’t acknowledge each other outside of a respectful nod to each other, just as Ratchet hoped. His cranky aura must still have been powerful, even if he felt better after shooting several Starscream-shaped aluminum boards.

He sat down on a bench next to the gun rack and took the cleaning kit off the wall. He almost finished the rental rifle for return when shame and anxiety chose then to slowly curl around his processor, too hot and pressing for his comfort. He _really_ didn’t want to think about this, about all the ways he could’ve handled the Wheeljack situation but chose not to.

Ratchet busied his servos with buffing out the little spots of dirt on the rifle’s barrel. Despite his attempts at distraction, his mind kept wandering to what he should do _now_ , what he could do to make it up to Wheeljack.

Though he’d rather not be thinking of anything right now, he was thankful that he could focus on the present instead of ruminating on his past self’s stupidity, as he was prone to.

It was clear enough that he’d have to apologise to Wheeljack. Ratchet had shut him down with a whole row of barbed accusations; the engineer’s stunned, hurt expression made Ratchet wince as he relived the memories. Wheeljack didn’t deserve that. He was stupid to flirt so brazenly, as if Ratchet was a project of his that he expected to explode, but Wheeljack didn’t deserve Ratchet being so outright rude.

Ratchet dug the buffing cloth into the seams and divots along the rifle’s stock, his agitation manifesting in a desire to deep clean, to have something to do with his servos.

He wanted Wheeljack. He wanted to be close to him in more ways than one. But he _hated_ being attached to anyone when they could be torn away from him by the jaws of war. The souls of dead friends weighed heavy like concrete on his backstrut, with time so slow to ease the weight and fade away memories yet so quick to pile more deaths on him. He couldn’t imagine how much a dead partner, a dead _Wheeljack_ would weigh.

Rooted in that was how sure he was that Wheeljack couldn’t seriously want Ratchet that way. The war and the perpetual grieving it brought turned him bitter, irritable, jumpy; there was no chance that Wheeljack would think those traits were attractive.

 _“Well, what’s wrong with being more than friends? You haven’t said that you_ don’t _want to be something more.”_

 _“It’s – not that_ simple _, Wheeljack.”_

That wasn’t a lie. It _wasn’t_ that simple for Ratchet, and he doubted it ever would be.

He stilled his hand on the rifle. Ratchet loved to call Wheeljack stupid and the engineer always took it in stride, but Wheeljack wasn’t _actually_ stupid. He knew Ratchet probably better than Ratchet knew himself; after all, a few aeons of friendship offered quite a bit of insight into a person. He probably saw everything beneath Ratchet’s cranky exterior – if there was much left, that is.

Was there even a chance that Wheeljack’s feelings were genuine? Wheeljack looked and sounded damn sincere, and he was a mech who knew what he wanted, not someone to be confused or delude himself about anyone. And to be attracted to Ratchet for so long… That went beyond just looking for an interface buddy.

Ratchet neatly folded the buffing cloth and put away the cleaning kit. The rifle in his lap was a mass-produced rifle, no carvings of Old Cybertronian glyphs or little scars from past battles to personalise it. Despite its humble origins, though, the cleaned metal shone as if it belonged to Ironhide’s personal armoury.

He stood and carefully set the rifle back on the rack, admiring how the dark silver of it stood against the black of the gun rack.

He made up his mind to apologise to Wheeljack. That was a start. Sure, he could have just let it blow over; Wheeljack would be eager to follow Ratchet’s lead and pretend nothing happened. But Wheeljack didn’t deserve that.

Wheeljack still had two hours until he had to be on-shift; he was definitely still in the medbay, dozing. Ratchet had no idea what he was going to say, but he didn’t care. A rehearsed speech would sound stilted and awkward coming from him.

He suddenly felt a lot like Wheeljack; blowing things up and fixing it after the fact instead of being proactive. Ratchet had no idea how Wheeljack lived like this, and had no desire to share Wheeljack’s work style.

Ratchet sighed. Opposites really do attract.

 

 

xXx

 

 

It took an hour for Wheeljack to give up on napping. He felt physically better, sure, but his thoughts kept gravitating towards how he’d fragged up with Ratchet and would never have the privilege of dating the medic.

Not that he would call a relationship traditional “dating” while they were marooned on an alien planet in the middle of an intergalactic war, but he would’ve done the best he could with what they had. Wheeljack would’ve taken Ratchet stargazing, firstly. In this deserted corner of Earth, there was so little light pollution it made the night sky look like a painting, broad swaths of pitch black sparkling with delicate little lights over the  haloes of the Milky Way weaving through it all. It wasn’t Cybertron’s starscape, but it was damn pretty.

It would’ve been an excellent backdrop for… _whatever_ he and Ratchet ended up doing, alone under the stars.

Wheeljack huffed and sat up. He was starting to sound like those Earth country songs that Ironhide liked, melodramatic and weepy. Recharge was too far to reach right now; he might as well just get to his lab and try and get something done today.

He was passing by Ratchet’s office on his way out when he glanced in out of habit. There, in a neat pile on his desk, was a stack of brilliantly patterned paper that caught his optic immediately. The sheets were much larger than human printer paper and vividly patterned; on top was a white piece with thick red striping on it.

He stepped in quietly, almost expecting Ratchet to materialise at any moment and yell at him to get out of his office, and picked up the first sheet in the stack. It was thin and flexible, but it felt high-quality, not like it would rip apart in his servos. The pattern was a bit flamboyant, but the colours matched Ratchet’s plating almost exactly.

Wheeljack eyed the small pile of folded cranes on the corner of Ratchet’s desk. One stood out from the rest, settled close to the side of Ratchet’s chair and looking out over the room like a sentry or faithful dog.

It was a white crane with orange and green stripes.

Wheeljack quirked an optic ridge at the implications of this. But he didn’t deal in theories or hypotheticals; unless he asked Ratchet himself about the paper birds, he wasn’t going to get carried away with ideas he couldn’t verify for himself.

He slid a few sheets off the top of the pile, including the red-and-white one, and subspaced them on his way out. Wheeljack didn’t guess at what those cranes could mean to Ratchet, but he did have an idea on how he could start making amends.

 

 

xXx

 

 

Ratchet stopped in the doorway of Wheeljack’s room – or what should have been Wheeljack’s room – and stared at the empty space on the cot.

That wasn’t right. Ratchet was so sure that Wheeljack would be right here that to be so easily proven false that he felt caught him in a strange, unproductive feedback loop. _Is Wheeljack in the room? No. He should be, though; check again. Is Wheeljack in the room? No. He should be, though; check again…_

The most logical conclusion would be that Wheeljack had simply left and was on-shift, probably feeling at least halfway better and eager to work on his projects, as always. But Ratchet couldn’t fend off the thoughts that Wheeljack had been so upset or affronted that he just left, unable to rest – or take any bit of goodwill from Ratchet.

Oh, Primus. That familiar sinking feeling like a stone in a lake set into his spark again. An ashamed sort of dread fluttered against his chest despite himself. He felt terrible all over again for being such a rude, inconsiderate, defensive, _aft_ to Wheeljack.

Ratchet wanted to say that Wheeljack was far more trouble than he was worth, but as much as he hated to admit it, that wasn’t true. Wheeljack was worth a lot more than a bit of shame over his own mistakes.

The medic sighed heavily. Damned engineer was lucky Ratchet liked him so much.

There was no point in standing around and sulking, though. If Ratchet recalled, he had one report left to file concerning the current partitions of energy. There were still a few decisions to make on what he could do to free up extra resources for the lab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am thirsty for critique, especially as I try to find my voice. Please indulge me


End file.
